Microsoft Talks About Spectre and Meltdown Patches Performance Impact
Microsoft states that older Windows versions such as 7 and 8 and servers will become slower after updates close the major vulnerabilities Meltdown and Spectre. However, most users with Windows 10 will hardly notice the performance difference on their PC after the security update, they say.
Windows 10 users with a PC from 2016 or newer, probably do not notice anything at all. Some users with Windows 10, but with an older chip from the Intel generation like Haswell or older, may notice a slowdown. Then a third category would be users with such an older chip and Windows 7 or 8, according to Microsoft, will notice a further reduction in the performance of their PC. Also, servers that run on Windows will have a "significant" performance reduction after the update, regardless of which processor used.
There has been a lot of discussion about Spectre and Meltdown since last week, Microsoft has something to say about Windows Systems performance after patching.
In general, our experience is that Variant 1 and Variant 3 mitigations have minimal performance impact, while Variant 2 remediation, including OS and microcode, has a performance impact.
Here is the summary of what we have found so far:
* With Windows 10 on newer silicon (2016-era PCs with Skylake, Kabylake or newer CPU), benchmarks show single-digit slowdowns, but we don't expect most users to notice a change because these percentages are reflected in milliseconds.
* With Windows 10 on older silicon (2015-era PCs with Haswell or older CPU), some benchmarks show more significant slowdowns, and we expect that some users will notice a decrease in system performance.
* With Windows 8 and Windows 7 on older silicon (2015-era PCs with Haswell or older CPU), we expect most users to notice a decrease in system performance.
* Windows Server on any silicon, especially in any IO-intensive application, shows a more significant performance impact when you enable the mitigations to isolate untrusted code within a Windows Server instance. This is why you want to be careful to evaluate the risk of untrusted code for each Windows Server instance, and balance the security versus performance tradeoff for your environment.
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Junior Member
Posts: 16
Joined: 2016-11-02
Seems like a ploy to get people to buy into the Win 10 ecosystem?
Senior Member
Posts: 3706
Joined: 2011-11-10
Servers are &^*%ed.
More surprising is how gamers are more upset about a few loss of framerates vs. your privacy being completely null and void. Jesus. Talk about bought and paid for. Go back to sleep world.
Senior Member
Posts: 1128
Joined: 2014-11-19
I have a 4790k PC on Win10 I use for productivity. It is the one I am most worried about. I am not sure why the privacy is not a bigger issue, it's really the main issue causing all the mess.

Senior Member
Posts: 11396
Joined: 2010-12-27
Well no need to worry performance decrease, since i aint getting microcode upgrade. Just really pissing me off, since there is nothing wrong with my 2600k...
This just feels alot of headaches for server owners, personal and insdustry wise.
There's a microcode update for sandybridge, just slim chance mainboards of that era will get an update.
Senior Member
Posts: 466
Joined: 2009-05-12
Well no need to worry performance decrease, since i aint getting microcode upgrade. Just really pissing me off, since there is nothing wrong with my 2600k...
This just feels alot of headaches for server owners, personal and insdustry wise.